I find it absolutely fitting that they been charged under “an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act.” The following characteristics of contemporary life: the disintegrating economy, the shrinking employment options for the poorer classes, the rise in the cost of food/living against sinking or stagnant wages, medical costs that bankrupt, ponzu schemes around construction and housing (popular in the London of the 1820s), and the increasing criminalization of the poor, I run across frequently in Victorian novels and non-fiction research work.
I also find analogs in German society during post-WWI inflation, and after the stock market crash of 1929. As the fellow said, “History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes.” And I think the next stanza’s being written.
